Susanne Bier has a pitch for why you should watch Practical Magic 2 in a hall full of strangers rather than on your phone in bed. In an exclusive conversation with Bollywood Hungama, the director laid out why theatrical viewing sits at the centre of what she's trying to do with the sequel, which brings Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman back as the Owens sisters.

Her argument is simple. A cinema turns a story into a group activity. "Watching a movie with other people is an entirely different experience from watching it on your own," Bier said, framing that communal reaction as something close to the reason cinema exists at all.

Laughter, tears, a room full of strangers

Bier described the theatre as a space where an audience processes a film together in real time. "You sit in a room, you share laughter, you share tears, you share a whole lot of things, and you have an experience with other human beings," she said. It's a contrast she draws deliberately against home viewing, which she thinks flattens that reaction into something private and, in her view, lesser.

"Watching a movie at home on your computer or even on your phone is the opposite," Bier said. "You can be engaged, but it doesn't have the joy of being with other people doing it." That's not a small thing to say out loud right now, with streaming numbers dominating how studios talk about success and theatrical windows getting shorter every year.

For Practical Magic 2, that philosophy isn't just marketing talk. The film is built around the Owens family, sisterhood and love sitting alongside the supernatural stuff audiences expect from the franchise. Bier has said the magic in the film exists to serve those relationships rather than the other way round, and she wants a theatre full of people to feel that shift together rather than absorb it alone.

"I want this movie to have lots of people sharing a fun, joyful, at times sad, but most importantly, really engaging experience," she said, tying her personal case for cinemas directly to what she's hoping audiences take away from this specific film.

That ambition puts Bier in an interesting spot. She's not just making a sequel to a film with a long-standing fan base built largely on repeat home viewing over the years. She's asking a generation that grew up rewatching the original Practical Magic on a laptop to show up opening weekend and do it as a crowd instead.

Whether that argument moves ticket sales is a separate question from whether it's true. But Bier clearly isn't hedging on it. Practical Magic 2 doesn't have a confirmed India release date yet, and how the theatrical-versus-streaming conversation plays out will likely shape how the film gets marketed here as that date gets locked in.